The Story Of Zeus

We own two dogs, Zeus and Xena. Zeus is the handsome chap in the picture, he looks a lot smarter than he is. We’ll get to Xena in the next post. We’ve had Zeus since he was 9 weeks old, loved him, snuggled him, and trained him (loosely speaking, and certainly not in the way you’d expect from someone trained in applied behavior analysis). He’s not the smartest animal out there, but he is such a friendly beast, and is an amazing pet.

When we first brought Zeus home, we had a mellow older dog, Patches, who has since crossed the rainbow bridge, and because she was an old lady we had no worries about her running away. When Zeus arrived we decided we needed to put some fencing up to stop him running away, so around the back of our house we have this green plastic mesh that “stops” him escaping. Of course, it doesn’t stop him at all, he just thinks it does because when he was small it actually did. In the middle of winter there are times the fence, which is 3ft high, is barely visibly above the snow and he could step over it, but he doesn’t.

Zeus has allowed himself to become limited by what he once was. He was a small, uncoordinated, bouncy little thing who is trapped in our back yard, not by a flimsy green fence, but by the limitations in his own mind. Zeus was taught by an old lady that he couldn’t break the fence, he would climb at it a little, but gave up.

When we look at our own lives, what are the things we have given up on? There are flimsy fences all around us stopping us from achieving the things we want to achieve. These could be our history telling us we can’t do it, our lack of belief, a lack of self-awareness (Zeus still thinks he’s a lap dog), or just a lack of interest in trying.

Here are the three takeaways for today:

1 – Zeus is problem-oriented. He sees the limitation and has failed to adapt his mindset to his physical growth and ability. Constantly reassess you potential to achieve.

2 – Know yourself for who you are today, not who you were yesterday or last year. You are constantly developing and experiencing new things. You gain new insight every day. The reason you failed last week can be the reason you succeed today.

3 – The environment changes. The obstacles to your goals last week may not be the same obstacles you face today.

Everything changes. We grow, we develop, we experience new things. Life, like the world, moves in seasons. In winter Zeus could step over the fence, in summer he could push it down. In his head he can do neither. Don’t let the barriers in your head stop you from achieving your goals, and remember that the world is changing and sometimes the world gives you opportunities to easily break through.